Google Customer Service Steps Into The Spotlight

Google just announced a customer service initiative -- effective immediately – that includes support via video chat direct with their experts. Google's also announced that they've improved their CSAT (customer satisfaction) scores by 100% recently, in working with their advertising customers.

Good stuff indeed. So is "Google customer service" no longer an oxymoron?

I don’t mean to be uncharitable in how I phrase that question. But approximate, slow-motion, sullen customer support has historically been the price a business pays to advertise on Google AdWords.

Times change at Google, and not a moment too soon

Google reached out to me to let me in on their new customer service initiative, and the changes and improvements they've been making in customer service and support for their advertising customers, which include over a million small- and mid-sized businesses.

This got my attention. Especially when Google shared with me:

A doubling of their customer satisfaction scores: from a previous and painful 44% to a current, much, much happier 90%.

An increase in the number of customer support interactions that are done in real time: from a previous and dismal 11% to a current level of 75% - 80%, with a queuing/wait time that's jaw-droppingly short: generally less than 30 seconds.

An exclusive look at their new and not yet announced video calling support option.

A peek at Google's new video calling support option (image courtesy Google)

First: a look at the bad old days

For background, here’s how it used to be: When you advertised with Google, all would go well until the day that you needed some help. In the bad old days, you’d send an email (the only channel of support that Google offered) and get an answer back maybe 10 or 16 hours later. Not a complete answer: a partial answer, or worse, a "Dear Advertiser, in order to assist you we need to know more” kind of response, demanding some technical detail you’d neglected to put in your initial email 16 hours earlier.

Once you provided this missing, often picayune, bit of information, you had to settle back for another 16 hours of waiting. For what might not be a complete answer to your question, even then.

Google's CSAT improves 100% – on a tough grading scale

Google is now boasting a 90% customer satisfaction rate among their advertising customers (the ones, at any rate, who fill out surveys). And Google is grading itself here on a pretty tough scale: their rating scale consists of seven boxes - one being extremely dissatisfied, and seven being extremely satisfied - and to count as ‘satisfied’ for Google’s purposes, they only accept the top two boxes. This is a more rigorous scale than the 4’s and 5’s on a scale of 5 that some other companies claim as proving customer satisfaction.

This 90% CSAT score contrasts impressively with the 44% rating Google's customers were giving it in the dark days of 2010, prior to the arrival of Deepak Khandelwal, the former McKinsey customer care wizard who signed on to spearhead a customer service improvement initiative in advertising support at Google.

My own unscientific survey also shows improvement

My own unscientific, limited survey of customers, tweets, and the opinions of my own circle of contacts makes it look to me like Google, and Google’s reported numbers, are telling the truth: Things have changed notably for the better.Google’s approach to advertising support, and the results they are achieving, have improved markedly. (If you disagree, agree, or have other insight to share, I encourage you to share your experience below in the comments.)

I asked, for example, Adwords customer Priscilla Pascual about it; she's the marketing and PR director of Amber Sky Home Mortgage (Elmwood Park, New Jersey). After her previous “mediocre” interactions with Adwords support in years past, Pascual told me this week that Google support has improved so much that she now considers Google’s ad support “an immense resource” she can count on to closely support her company's marketing efforts.

From the days of “could we get back to you, uh, never?"...

In the bleak days of 2010 and earlier, “you basically could just email us and that was it,” concedes Khandelwal, who is Google’s Vice President, Global Customer Service. Only 11% of advertising customer service interactions were real time, the rest being the email-and-wait routine I’ve already described.

Which violated one of the bedrock principles of giving great customer service: You need to give customer service on your customer’s schedule, not your own.

…to real-time support with queue times shorter than 30 seconds

The transformation led by Khandelwal began with the switch to a real-time approach: answering customer questions one on one, at the time they were being asked. The Google move toward real-time began with something fundamental, but stunningly missing until then in the Google world: live phone support. This shouldn’t be revolutionary, right? But it went against the norms of Google culture, and was a real struggle to bring about, Khandelwal told me.

And kudos to Google for doing this right, once they set out to do it. You can’t offer quote unquote real time support only on your own schedule and in your own language if you’re a global company. And Google figured this out. When they decided to offer phone support, they also committed to offering it around the world in 42 (forty-two!) languages, and offering complete 24/5 support in English because, you know, the sun rarely sets on the British linguistic empire.

Google also built real-time text-based chat functionality, a channel even more popular than phone support (for reasons that are pretty understandable, including the ability to type or paste URLs and ad copy, an inability that can be striking in phone support). In both the phone and chat channels, Google has committed to —and, they tell me, succeeded in–having almost all calls and chat requests answered in less than 30 seconds.

As a result, 75% to 80% (depending on the market) of support interactions are now 1:1, according to Khandelwal.

Real-time and then some: Google introduces support via video call

In a nifty evolution of their two existing real-time channels (telephone and text-based chat), Google is, as I type this, rolling out video-based customer support: the ability to choose "make video call" from right within your adwords account, wait a few seconds, and be speaking directly, eyeball to eyeball, with one of Google's support experts. (You can even see, right on your screen, where you stand in the waiting queue.) The video calling rollout is immediate in the U.S. and parts of Europe, and video calling will also be "significantly rolled out around the globe by the end of second quarter," says Khandelwal.

Video calling has some advantages over voice-only phone support beyond the sexiness factor inherent in video. It keeps both your hands free. It keeps the caller and the callee focused on the call and on the issues being worked out (each party being less likely to multitask when the other can see your hands). And perhaps its pièce de résistance: video affords the opportunity for screen sharing: It’s a lot easier to communicate about computer issues when you’re literally on the same page.

Google’s customers are, not surprisingly, taking to it like fish to fish food.

So far…so what? Judging Google’s progress

How should we rate Google’s customer service improvements, and what are the hazards ahead for Google and its customers in the area of customer support? In my case, as a customer experience consultant I try hard not to let clients off the hook when the customer service improvements they set their sights on don't go far enough or aren't built in a way that can be sustained; in that spirit, here are some of my thoughts on what Google's pulled off so far. (Please share your own thoughts below in the comments if you’re a user of Adwords or otherwise have opinions on the subject.)

1. Culture change, or just tactic change? Real-time one on one customer support is a big deal. But it seems worth exploring how the Google culture could have been so un-humanistic that it was ever considered reasonable to not have real-time support for its revenue-generating customers, and that it took a gifted outsider from McKinsey to change this for just one little area of the company. It may be that the currently improved levels of support are going to be vulnerable the next time Google technocrats think customers are better off on their own rather than bothering the support staff with their picky little problems.

2. How satisfied is “satisfied?”Remember, Google is counting both the delighted and the satisfied when it claims that 90% of its customers are satisfied with the support they receive. Questions to ask from here, as Google strives to improve further: Why aren’t all of these 90 out of 100 in the top box? And what about the remaining 10% who are truly unhappy, not to mention the customers who feel too burned to even fill out surveys? There's remaining room for improvement here--and in my long experience in similar situations, getting from 90 to 95 is going to be harder than going from 44 to 90 was.

3. Does Google have the right people yet—attitude-wise as well as aptitude-wise–doing support, and are they appropriately trained? The caliber, attitude, and level of training of the employees providing customer support are big factors in the quality of support, regardless of channel.

4. Is video support going to end up swallowing the gains made so far in the other real-time channels? Support by video call is very sexy. It may indeed be revolutionary: and of course it has implications for industries far afield from Google (for example, fashion, medicine, haberdashery…) But it isn’t right for everyone. For example, it's inappropriate, even unusable, for

- visually impaired customers

- part-time entrepreneurs trying to get Adwords support while at day jobs they can’t yet leave (you know who you are)

- the many who, right or wrong, are squeamish about Google and privacy

So it’s important that the other real time support channels not become undervalued, understaffed, and underfunded as video-based support takes off.

Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, customer support consultant, and customer experience author.